


Under the Skin

by orphan_account



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-25
Updated: 2014-12-25
Packaged: 2018-03-03 13:39:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2852762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>hc_prompt: nervous breakdown. </p><p>Charlie Weasley, after the war, doesn't know what to do with himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Under the Skin

**Author's Note:**

> WARNINGS: mental health issues, depression, nervous breakdown, grief, cannon character death in past

> _"There are holes in the sky_  
>  _Where the rain gets in_  
>  _But they're ever so small_  
>  _That's why the rain is thin."_
> 
> -Spike Milligan

 

 

 

The leaves by the pool are wet. It’s not raining, there’s just water hanging in the air, and the leaves are wet. Charlie picks three on his way past, tearing them up. He wants to sit down, or better yet, lie down. He had to leave, though, because as much as he loves his family, they’re just a bit much now. All the time. And, he’s crying, and now isn’t the time to cry. So he sits on a wet bit of tree trunk and tears up the third leaf, watching water fall from tree branches into the water of the pool.

 

He’s shut his eyes to squeeze out the tears, because his eyes are sore and won’t stop leaking but he can’t manage crying properly so there’s just water sitting there in his eyes, hurting, and so he doesn’t notice anyone approaching. When someone shifts and clears their throat he doesn’t bother to open his eyes. He would have assumed Bill had come after him, in the past, but he and Bill have separate lives, have for a long time. It’s years since they did everything together. It’s years since they did much of anything together.

 

“Hey, Char.”

 

Charlie smiles and lifts his face, not bothering to open his eyes. Warm, big hands are there, and cradle his face, rough thumbs wiping tears off his cheeks, knowing to leave his eyes be.

 

“Anything set you off, or just general stuff? Uh, I mean do you want to talk about it?”

 

Charlie shakes his head, just a little, and leans into the strong body waiting for him.

 

“Alright. You’re wet, you know. It’s wet out. And now I’m wet. You’re family’s pretty awesome, you know, when I left the house Ginny was stood on the sofa with your brother… Percy? Yeah, Percy. With Percy’s book and reading aloud from it, teasing him. He wrote it, yeah? Anyway, everyone was laughing and he was bright red and he looked like he was about to explode and then Ginny grinned and read another bit, then stopped laughing and said she liked it. I think Percy might have gone magenta. I love you, yeah?”

 

Charlie nods. He knows.

 

“You’re allowed to be unhappy. You’re allowed to not be healed yet. I don’t think any of them are, however it seems.”

 

“I’m not part of it anymore,” Charlie says, mouth damp from rain and tears, “and I don’t even really care. Watching them is like watching strangers.”

 

“Sorry.”

 

“Can’t deal with this.”

 

“I know.”

 

Charlie nods and tucks his hand into Jamie’s pocket. When he’d told Ginny about Jamie, blushing furiously and so incredibly awkward about it all, Ginny had thought Jamie was a dragon. And he hadn’t realised until he introduced the two, when Ginny came to Romania after everything had happened and been shocked to find Jamie and Charlie snuggling. She’d found it funny, once she understood, and she likes Jamie.

 

“I thought it’d all make more sense, now,” Charlie says, “but I still don’t get it. Are we doing it wrong? Do we miss… whatever that is?”

 

“No, we don’t miss anything. Is this about… there are too many of you, and you all look alike. Who’s the scrawny one who was wearing Harry Potter’s posh jumper last night?”

 

“Ron.”

 

“Yeah. Is this because he was talking about sex with his girlfriend and all that, after the fire-whiskey?”

 

“No,” Charlie says.

 

Jamie doesn’t push it, which is nice. And the way things go. Jamie never pushes, which is why it took them nearly six years to get to the point that Charlie managed to understand what Jamie was asking for, that a relationship was actually possible, in Jamie’s head. And then another year for Charlie to understand that what was in Jamie’s head wasn’t that different than what was in Charlie’s head.

 

“I know you don’t get much out of it, but I’d like to kiss you, Char. It would make me feel like I was being reassuring.”

 

Charlie lifts his face away from Jamie’s chest and accepts the kiss. He doesn’t get why people do it in terms for sexual stuff, but he likes that it makes Jamie feel closer to him so he does sort of enjoy it.

 

“At least I’ve stopped crying,” Charlie says, prying open his eyes.

 

He bursts out laughing when he catches sight of Jamie. Ze’s wearing a Christmas hat and has clip on radish earings that Charlie’s almost certain come from a cracker. Ze’s also got an eyepatch pushed off gir face. And hir teeth are bright orange.

 

“Oh, George got you with the fudge, hmm?” Charlie says, “I suggested that.”

 

“He took a photograph and then vanished,” Jamie says.

 

“He sticks them on their old bedroom wall and then… I dunno.”

 

Jamie ruffles Charlie’s hair and then removes the hat, replacing it on Charlie’s head.

 

“You’re eyes look sore again.”

 

Charlie lets his forehead thunk against Jamie’s chest. He smiles, suddenly, remembering the first time he discovered the Norwegian Ridgeback that Jamie has tattooed there. They’d re-christened the Ridgeback ‘Norberta’, after that particular incident.

 

“Come on. I’ll tell your Dad you have a headache and you can lie down,” Jamie says.

 

“I hate being tired.”

 

“Having a breakdown will do that to you, love.”

 

“I didn’t have a breakdown.”

 

“Sobbing because you couldn’t find a particular pair of socks suggested otherwise.”

 

Charlie gets up and lets Jamie tuck him into hir side, the warmth of it spreading into Charlie’s bones. When they get back to the Burrow, Charlie slips past the livingroom door, the bright flash of a Christmas tree and Ginny’s laughter like something from another life-time. He pauses by the kitchen door, his mother standing by the back door reminding him that he’s not the only one who’s struggling with this year’s Christmas. He kicks his shoes off and goes to her, shutting the door to the rest of the house.

 

“Mum,” he says, standing beside her, “want company?”

 

“Oh, Charlie, you startled me.”

 

Charlie takes that as a ‘yes’ (or at least not a concrete ‘no’) and settles against the doorframe. It’s nice, just being with her again. She is someone he always misses, no matter what changes in his life or how long he goes without seeing her. They sit, after a while, by silent, mutual agreement. It starts to rain harder, slanting away from them in the wind.

 

“Tonks used to sit like this,” she says, “just watching the rain. I never understood that need for stillness and nothing. I suppose she was sad.”

 

“I liked Tonks, the one time I met her.”

 

“My sadness was never like that. It’s never been like this before. How are you, my son?”

 

“I’m getting better,” Charlie says, not bothering to lie to her.

 

He had, at first. After the socks incident, after the panic attack with the water-dragons, after collapsing while teaching a small group of kids about mythology, after forgetting half his Romanian in the pub and nearly getting himself kicked out, after almost losing his job for not turning up to work and after being forced to take some leave. Indefinite leave. He’d always told her he was fine. And then he’d not slept for three days, shouted at his boss, called Jamie names until ze retreated to work and even slept there, and then he’d not been able to stop shaking and his heart had gone irregular and he’d acted on instinct and gone to his mother.

 

“Good. I’m glad I have got to meet Jamie. What am I to use, again? Not he.”

 

“Ze. You can use ‘they’ if you forget. Ze, for ‘he’, hir, for ‘his’, or hirs for possessive pronoun, Hir for ‘him’, too.”

 

“I like… hir.”

 

Charlie smiles. She hadn’t even thought to try and get it right to begin with, and everyone else just uses ‘he’ most of the time, which must make Jamie uncomfortable.

 

“Ginny uses ‘they’,” Charlie says.

 

“I like the way…ze… I like the way ze seems comfortable with you and that ze doesn’t press you for… things.”

 

Charlie shrugs.

 

“Could do with a bit of a kick up the bum sometimes, though, yeah?” Charlie says.

 

“I used to pretend I didn’t know which was which,” his Mum says, out of nowhere but Charlie knows what she means, “sometimes I really did get it wrong, in the heat of the moment, but sometimes I’d do it on purpose because they were so funny. I really did find them funny. I never told him that, I never laughed, I never said ‘yes, that’s funny, that’s a talent’. I thought it would encourage bad habits.”

 

“I hadn’t even seen Fred for years,” Charlie says, voice going hoarse with saying that outloud, “three years. Tri-wizard tournament.”

 

“Fred,” she says, and that’s it.

 

They sit and watch the rain again, until Jamie finds them and makes them tea.

 

“I do like hir,” Charlie’s mother says, softly, once Jamie’s nudged them both to sit at the table and plonked tea in front of them both and gone to find Charlie a dry jumper, “I always did say that tea is the best salve.”

 

Charlie bites his lip and doesn’t mention the time Jamie had a stomach bug, throwing up everything ze ate or drank, and Charlie had panicked and tried to feed hir tea. Jamie had had a long talk with Charlie about that and had ended up laughing at his insistence that it’s what his mother would have done. Ze had hugged Charlie and told him he was an emotionally stunted idiot and his mother was much wiser and ze loved him and all sorts of things.

 

~

>  
> 
> _"i like my body when it is with your_  
>  _body. It is so quite new a thing._  
>  _Muscles better and nerves more._  
>  _i like your body. i like what it does,_  
>  _i like its hows. i like to feel the spine_  
>  _of your body and its bones, and the trembling_  
>  _-firm-smooth ness and which i will_  
>  _again and again and again_  
>  _kiss, i like kissing this and that of you,_  
>  _i like, slowly stroking the, shocking fuzz_  
>  _of your electric fur, and what-is-it comes_  
>  _over parting flesh … And eyes big love-crumbs,_
> 
> _and possibly i like the thrill_
> 
> _of under me you so quite new"_
> 
> -ee cummings
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  

 

“No, I’m not going to go home and fuck my ‘boyfriend’,” Charlie growls, losing it all of a sudden, arm shoving until Alin, who’d been leering and making dirty jokes all night, is against the wall, Charlie’s arm keeping him caged there, “for one, I don’t have a boyfriend I have a partner, because Jamie isn’t a boy. For two, I’m asexual, so we don’t have sex. Which you know because we’ve had this discussion a hundred times.”

 

Charlie lets go and stalks away from the table. He realises that he is over-reacting a little bit, and Alin hadn’t meant anything by it. He should probably go back and apologise. But it’s not like things between him and his colleagues aren’t completely screwed up already so he leaves Oana’s dining room and goes to sit on the front step. To his surprise, Alin comes and sits with him.

 

“Scuze,” Alin says, lighting a cigarette, “I wasn’t meaning you in particular.”

 

“I know.”

 

“Bad moment?”

 

“Bad… yeah. Moment.”

 

“You ever had sex?”

 

“Once. It was cold and damp and incredibly awkward, and painful.”

 

“Maybe you did it wrong. Or maybe you have no libido because of your… surmenajul. It makes sex hard?”

 

“No, I’m just not attracted to people that way.”

 

“Oh. Right.”

 

Alin shrugs and then describes, in great detail, what he likes about sex with Oana. Charlie listens politely and then makes his excuses and goes home to faceplant on the sofa.

 

“Oof.”

 

Or onto Jamie, seeing as ze’s there sitting in the way.

 

“Hi,” Charlie says, “Alin is a cock. Giant one.”

 

“Did he smoke at you again?”

 

“Nah. Ace stuff.”

 

“Sorry, man.”

 

Charlie bites ze’s thigh, seeing as it’s right there.

 

“Uh, I kind of… that’s…” Jamie says.

 

Charlie can feel hir arousal, so he moves away and leave hir thigh alone.

 

“Sorry,” Charlie says.

 

“I’ll have a wank, we’re good.”

 

“Do you ever… do you ever want that? Want sex? With me?”

 

“I like our relationship, Charlie. You know this.”

 

“Sorry. Just uncertain.”

 

“Okay. No, I don’t want it. I like my sexual partners to enjoy it, too, that’s part of the turn on. It has to be mutual. If you don’t want it, I don’t want it with you.”

 

“But sex is important, to humans.”

 

“Apparently so. And yet, here we are. Maybe it’ll come up in the future, we might have to deal with it. As it stands, thought, I haven’t missed it enough to want to do anything about it. Okay? And even if I did, I love you, I’ll always love you. Sex isn’t exactly easy for me, anyway, it never has been. It’s like, I don’t always have the parts I need for it, anyway.”

 

Charlie pulls himself together and sits up.

 

“I’m so tired,” he admits, “and there’s been a bit too much of sexual stuff around me since new years. Between that and Christmas in England I’m just… I’m just not dealing with this, am I?”

 

“Nope.”

 

“Damn it, I thought I was getting better at that. Okay, so, what I know; you love me, you’re amazing and look awesome. We both like the way the other looks. I don’t mind you having a wank, and sometimes you wank with me, on the rare occasion that I do that. You like that. Do you want to do that?”

 

“Only if you’re in the mood.”

 

Charlie contemplates that.

 

“Wouldn’t mind. Might relax me, a little, you know.”

 

Charlie lets Jamie kiss him, on the way to the bedroom, lets Jamie choose from the stack of music they keep for such times, lets Jamie help him out of his clothes. He shuts his eyes and listens to Jamie’s breathing, imagines hir watching, watching Charlie’s hand and body. He feels Jamie’s fingers against his side and knows Jamie’s after his freckles. It tickles a bit and that’s kind of nice. Jamie keeps time with him, for a bit, but it always takes Charlie ages to orgasm and he probably won’t tonight, so there comes a point when Jamie overtakes him. Charlie keeps going, enjoying the sensations against his skin, his body reacting, the tingling through him.

 

Jamie makes a strangled noise and Charlie knows hir head is going back, into the pillow, hir neck stretched, twisted, hir fingers flexing in the sheet. Charlie opens his eyes to watch, because he likes the way Jamie looks, spread out there. Jamie’s eyes slide open, lazy, heavy-lidded, and ze beams at Charlie.

 

“That was brilliant,” Jamie says.

 

~

 

> **“There’s no problem so awful you can’t add some guilt to it and make it even worse.”**

-Bill Watterson (Calvin, Calvin and Hobbs)

 

 

 

 

Every time Charlie looks at George, sat there in Jamie’s chair reading about quidditch, he feels an uncomfortable clench in his stomach. He’s already thrown up this morning, so he thinks it’s residual nausea to begin with. It takes him all day, it take George wandering around exploring things with his fingers, it takes George picking up the family photo on the mantel piece, it takes Jamie coming home at lunch time and having to make hir own lunch, it takes vacuuming half the room and deciding that’s good enough and then George completing the job. It take all day for Charlie to recognise the clench as ‘guilt’. By the time he does all his muscles are tight, clenched up along with his stomach, and he’s pretty sure he’s on the edge of a panic attack. Not that he can always tell.

 

“Ron’s a pretty good businessman, believe it or not,” George says, talking about the shop, unaware of Charlie’s fragile state of mind, the moment of imbalance imminent and threatening.

 

“Excuse me a moment,” Charlie says and goes to the kitchen, “cup of tea?”

 

“No thanks.”

 

Charlie puts the kettle on and goes to stick his head out of the window, trying to quash the feelings of helplessness, trying to drown out the little voice telling him he hasn’t done enough today, the frantic feeling of failure, the feeling of not doing anything for Jamie and their house, their home, of relying on George for things. George of all people, who came here for a break.

 

It doesn’t work.

 

Instead, he makes tea and listens to the voice for a while. He accepts that he hasn’t done all the things he should have today, that he really has let George help out, that he hasn’t been very kind or very helpful to Jamie recently. Then he bites his lip and sets about soothing the voice.

 

It’s not your fault, you’re ill.

 

Jamie will say something, ze’s demonstrated this in the past, if you let it go too far.

 

George wanted to help, or he wouldn’t have.

 

George doesn’t want to be treated like a piece of glass, he said so.

 

You did a bit of cleaning and tidying, you ate lunch at the right time, you kissed Jamie goodbye before work.

 

“Alright, Charlie?” George asks, leaning in the doorway, making Charlie jump a bit.

 

“Yeah, sorry. I… thinking.”

 

“Everything’s a bit fucked right now, isn’t it?”

 

“A bit.”

 

“Life sucks, sometimes.”

 

“I… you… I mean, it’s not…”

 

“No, no, it’s not the same. Nothing’s the same.”

 

Charlie nods.

 

“It’s still valid,” Charlie manages at last, looking up and meeting George’s eyes.

 

“Yeah,” George says, “Fred was better at this shite.”

 

“Yes, he was.”

 

George smiles, a tiny smile. Because Charlie couldn’t always tell them apart, but he did know when it was Fred who joined him, late at night, on the steps in the back garden, and when it was George. He did know which was which when they stopped being ‘Gred and Forge’, ‘Fred and George’, ‘Weasley twins’, ‘pranksters’ and found a bit of seriousness for five minutes. He knew then, because Fred was always more ready for that.

 

“You were always just a bit smarter, though,” Charlie says.

 

George makes Charlie a cup of tea and talks about Fred. From the side, not face on, coming at the subject from everywhere but the front. The way he does. Like he can’t face seeing Fred, even in memories, and has to tell things from other perspectives, so Fred isn’t visible. Charlie drinks his tea and listens, trying to cool the heat of the guilt sitting heavy in his belly.

 

~

 

It’s very cold, sometimes, in Romania. Even inside, in their flat, Charlie feels it like it’s creeping into his bones. He turns the heating off, sometimes, when jamie’s gone and there’s no-one home except him, and then Jamie comes back and Charlie tells him he was in the shower and didn’t notice it was off, or had only just got back, or some other little lie. Jamie knows they’re lies, but leaves them. Let’s Charlie lie. Charlie never tells, and he’s pretty sure Jamie never works out, but on those days, after those times, Charlie feels entirely alone. Even sat on the sofa with Jamie, or making dinner with hir, or sitting out back looking at the stars. He’ll go for a cup of tea and stand in the middle of the room, staring at nothing, lost.

 

It’s like being in a pitch black room where everyone else knows it’s light and can see everything, but Charlie can just see fog and drifting darkness and shadows and shapes and, to him, he’s the only one. He’s got the only spot of light and no matter how hard he pulls, he can’t bring anyone into his spot. He can’t leave it, because if he puts a toe out he’ll fall because there’s no floor outside the light, no faces, no ‘Charlie’, just black nothing. So he stays put, in the tiny cubicle, like a cage.

 

“Are you warm enough? You’re shivering.”

 

Charlie shrugs. He is warm enough, or he thinks he might be, he just shakes all the time and can’t stop it. Jamie pulls him down into a chair and gives him tea and talks about work, but Charlie can still feel the ache and pain of being alone, of having no one.

 

“I’m going to go read my book,” Charlie manages, before fleeing and shutting himself away in the bedroom.

 

It’s half an hour of pain, the lump shoving up against his lungs spreading, before he starts to sob. Then the tears come like rain, dripping in a pitter patter against his jeans. He finds himself missing Bill, missing the easy camaraderie they had when they were young and still lived at home. Misses Fred, always misses Fred, and George, too, because Fred and George go together.

 

“I don’t know what to do when you’re like this,” Jamie says, standing helpless in the doorway, “can’t you tell me what you need? Just this once. I’m tired, I’ve been working all day.”

 

Charlie pushes past him and goes to the fire, kneeling down with a handful of flu powder, ready to call Bill. Then he stops, thinking of Bill’s wife and daughter, of his little cottage, of the laughter that had been going on last time Charlie was there. He screws himself up to call Bill anyway, but at the last minute it’s his mother’s fireplace he turns up in. His father’s in the livingroom, reading the paper, and he looks up, surprised, and looks terribly, terribly old.

 

“Charlie!” His father says, “ah. Bad day?”

 

“Bad fucking life,” Charlie says, feeling his body trembling, knees painful on the hard floor, “I can’t… I’m crying. I can’t stop, and I don’t know what to do, and I’m freaking Jamie out, and… I want help.”

 

“Alright, kid. Try breathing a bit deeper, count them out. Longer on the exhale, remember?”

 

Charlie does as he’s told, and for a bit he feels five years old again, cradled in his father’s arms after falling and grazing his knees. He manages to calm himself and the tears slow until they stop fizzing in the hearth.

 

“Your mother’s upstairs, I can call her.”

 

“No, I don’t want to worry her.”

 

“You all worry her, every minute of every day, just by being alive. It’s good, it’s an affirmation. I’ll call her.”

 

Charlie thinks it sounds awful, worry being a reminder that she hasn’t lost all of them, so he lets his father call.

 

“Molly! Charlie’s here, needs a bit of a chat.”

 

Molly.

 

“Mum?” Charlie says, when she appears, looking weary and awfully worn, “who calls you Molly, now?”

 

“Don’t worry about that, love,” she says, not asking what he means or why he’s asking, smiling, understanding him, “what happened?”

 

“Nothing. I just missed you. Missed Billy.”

 

“It’s alright, that. Fabion and Gideon missed me something dreadful, when I had Bill. I didn’t love them any less, and they knew that, but things change and that can be painful. It’s allowed to be.”

 

“I miss you.”

 

“Perhaps you do, or perhaps you’re just struggling,” she says, eyes going distant, disconnecting the way she does sometimes.

 

The way he does sometimes.

 

“I love you,” Charlie says, fervent, feeling it.

 

His mother smiles and reaches into the low flames to touch his cheek, then she gets up and leaves him to talk to his father for a while. They talk about quidditch and Harry Potter and the ministry, and then Charlie pulls back and finds Jamie sat on the sofa, watching him.

 

“You’re shaking,” Jamie says, sounding tired.

 

“Everyone’s tired today,” Charlie says, leaning against Jamie’s knees, tilting his head back.

 

“We’re tired every day, now. There’s too much to do, or too much to deal with.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“I miss you, sometimes. Tonight. When you’re like this.”

 

“I know, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to.”

 

“Okay. Can we go to bed, now? I have to work tomorrow.”

 

Charlie lets Jamie pull him up off the floor and give him a hug, but then he wraps an arm around Jamie’s waist and leads hir to the bedroom, taking of hir clothes, touching hir skin, hir hair, soothing, laughing, breathing together.

 

“I love you, Charlie Weasley.”

 

“I’ll get better soon,” Charlie promises, “I will.”

 

“You already are. Even a month ago something like today would have lead to me sleeping alone in an empty bed while you paced and beat yourself up with guilt and stored yourself away somewhere I couldn’t reach for days. Now, here you are, taking care of me.”

 

“You need it.”

 

“Yes, I do. I’m tired.”

 

“I promise.”

 

Jamie sits on the bed and looks up at him, and Charlie lays hir back against the sheets, tangles them together, kisses hir forehead and falls asleep to the sound of hir steady, sniffling breathing.


End file.
